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Debunking Mercury Myths

Now that the word is out - April 12th is the big day when ALL of CS5 will be announced, I’m seeing a lot of misinformation on Twitter over what’s necessary to take advantage of Premiere Pro CS5 and the Mercury Playback Engine:

1. It won’t run on laptops. FALSE I’m running it today on my MacBook Pro, and taking full advantage of 64-bit goodness and multicore optimization. Even though there’s not a supported GPU in my MacBook, the performance gains over CS4 and CS3 are very significant. In my own, unofficial testing, I would say that Mercury is 25%-30% faster in all day-to-day activities. Your mileage may vary, of course, depending on the format you edit.

2. I can only get real-time effects with an expensive graphics card. FALSE Your performance will vary depending on the CPU and amount of RAM in your system, but Premiere Pro will always try to play effects in real time on the timeline. Now, it IS true that the correct Nvidia graphics card will accelerate a LOT of effects, but to say that you absolutely need a graphics card to use effects in the timeline is a myth. In CPU-only, or software mode, Premiere Pro CS5 is taking much better advantage of RAM and multicore CPU’s, and you’ll definitely be able to play back more effects than CS4 in real-time.

3. I need to change my Operating System to run Premiere Pro CS5 POSSIBLY TRUE Premiere Pro CS5 is a native 64-bit application, and needs a 64-bit OS in order to run. On Windows, this means running Vista or Windows 7, 64-bit edition. Mac users will need to run Leopard for most functions, and to take advantage of GPU acceleration you’ll need Snow Leopard.

4. My Mac Pro Tower can’t use an Nvidia Quadro FX4800 card. POSSIBLY TRUE Most Mac Pro Towers can upgrade to an Nvidia GeForce GTX285 or Quadro FX 4800. Sadly, however, there are some very early Mac Pro towers that are not compatible with the Nvidia cards. Go to About this Mac, click on More Info, and check your Model Identifier number. If you have 3,1 or 4,1, or higher numbers, you’re fine. If you have 1,1, you can’t upgrade your video card.

If you have any specific questions on Mercury, the latest hardware information is found here: http://www.adobe.com/go/64bitsupport and I will be answering any questions in the comments as I get them.

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Thanks for this post about Mercury Karl. It really looks to be something special.

I have a question about how the Mercury Playback Engine works in conjunction with your I/O hardware for monitoring. Since Mercury is GPU dependent does it’s acceleration extend to your hardware for acceleration on your client monitor? Of course it works with your Record monitor inside Premiere Pro since that’s connect to your graphics card but what about your 3rd party hardware like say an AJA Kona card? Thanks!

Posted by Scott Simmons  on  03/29  at  04:14 PM

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Is there a compatible card from nVidia that supports DisplayPort ?

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  03/30  at  12:33 PM

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@ Scott: The GPU accelerates the effects regardless of which display is used to see the output. Years ago, the GPU was originally used just to accelerate/render and display through the card’s own output, but today’s video card GPU’s have 2-way communication internally. The multiple cores in the GPU can co-process information and send it back into the system, so it’s not limited to where the video is displayed.

@ Mezigue: The Nvidia Quadro CX actually has 1 DVI port and 2 display ports. Nvidia has been an early adopter of DisplayPort.

Posted by Michelle Gallina  on  03/30  at  01:53 PM

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Thanks. But I forgot to add “for Mac”. The CX doesn’t seem to be Mac-compatible. Or is it ?

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  03/30  at  02:00 PM

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No, CX is Windows only. Mercury, however, is compatible with these MAC cards:

• Quadro FX 4800
• GeForce GTX 285

Posted by Michelle Gallina  on  03/31  at  10:52 AM

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